The Rebellion of 1745, while disarranging the posts, brought into vogue the system of expresses; and this system once established was not long in extending itself. An express cost 3d. a mile, and, no doubt, travelled faster than at the beginning of the century. The roads had since been improved; and it may well be believed that the postmasters, as their custom increased, kept better horses. It was probably the speed of the express as compared with the tardiness of the post which induced the wealthy, about the middle of the last century, largely to employ this mode of conveyance for their letters. It had indeed one drawback, a drawback such as in our own time has attended the use of telegrams. It was apt to excite alarm. "Let me," writes the good-natured Charles Townshend to his sister-in-law, Lady Ferrers, under date September 1759--"Let me now desire you to conclude whenever you receive an express that it brings you good news, for otherwise I shall be obliged to defer one day sending you any such account if it should not come to me on a post day, least the express should alarm you. I should not chuse to detain you one minute from the news I know your heart beats for, and yet I should not chuse to frighten you by the sudden manner of its arrival, for which reason I desire you will remember to receive whatsoever express I send with confidence and as a friend." But the purpose for which an express might be employed was jealously restricted. A man might employ an express to carry a letter; but woe betide him if he employed the same agency for the purpose of disseminating news. The licensed carriers at Cambridge had recently been prosecuted and the postmasters on the Great West Road taken severely to task for doing this very thing. What are we to think of the intolerable state of bondage in which men were content to live when even the gentle Allen could give the following instruction? "At every stage," he writes to one of his surveyors, "you must forbid the deputies to send any express except to the General Post Office in London, unless it be for His Majesty's immediate service; and all other intelligence must be conveyed either by the common post or particular messenger."